


Parted by Some Silly Thing

by Duck_Life



Series: Jean and Maddie Are Twins AU [1]
Category: X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: 1960s, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Inspired by The Parent Trap (1998), Summer Camp, Twins, first part of a long long long planned series, i mean. you know who maddie's dad is., what if jean and maddie were twins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-10-05 22:57:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20496737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: Maddie meets a girl at summer camp who looks a lot like her.





	Parted by Some Silly Thing

Maddie gets interrupted from her mess hall eggs by a dark-haired girl swinging into the seat across from her. “Emily Haywood took the last of the bacon right before I got to it,” the girl whines. Maddie actually glances around to see if the girl is talking to her. Evidently, she is. “And I  _ know _ she just did it to mess with me, because guess what? She’s a vegetarian! She  _ hates _ me, I told you so.” 

Maddie blinks. “Are… you talking to me?”

The girl rolls her eyes. “Real funny, Jean. Very mature.”

“My name’s not Jean.”

The girl just smirks, like they’re playing some game. “Oh, of course, my mistake. What’s your name today? Francine Dubois? Madame Charlotte the Harlot?”

_ What _ ? “No, my name is Maddie,” Maddie says, getting the sudden sick feeling that this girl is just making fun of her. Going away to summer camp was tough enough, but now she’s getting picked on. “I think you might have me confused with someone else, maybe?”

“C’mon, Jeannie—”

“Annie!” a girl calls from across the room. “Come on, I saved you a seat over here. And I grabbed you some bacon too on account of I knew Emily was going to take it all before you got to it.”

Annie looks from the girl to Maddie, and back, her eyes as round as saucers. “Oh, you gotta be friggin’ kidding me,” she says. “I’ll be right back, Red.” She lurches out of her seat and races across the mess hall to the girl who called her. A camp counselor tries to snag her but Annie’s too fast and single-minded to be caught. 

She comes back, tugging her friend by the sleeve. Her friend has bright red hair tied into twin braids and she’s wearing baggy shorts and a tank top and when she looks up to meet Maddie’s eyes—  _ oh _ . Whoa.

Maddie feels like she’s staring at herself in a mirror. 

She and her doppelganger just look at each other for a long moment. And then Annie practically screeches, “RIGHT? I just blew your minds, right?”

“Um,” the other redheaded girl says, looking just as confused as Maddie feels. “Hi?”

“I’m Maddie,” Maddie says. What are they supposed to do? Shake hands? Something seriously weird is going on. “Who are you?”

“I’m Jeannie,” her mirror image says. 

“Oh my gawd,” Annie crows, dancing around next to Jeannie. “This is just like that movie ‘The Parent Trap’ with Hayley Mills, and  _ you’re _ Hayley Mills and  _ you’re _ Hayley Mills. You guys, this is so cool.”

“Annie,” Jeannie says, shutting her up. She turns back to Maddie. “Where are you from?”

“Nebraska.”

“Nebraska?” Jean repeats, incredulous. “I’m from Annandale-on-Hudson, in New York. How’d you get all the way in Nebraska?”

Maddie snorts. “How’d you get all the way to New York?”

“I was adopted,” Jean says matter-of-factly. It’s something she’s almost always known. In third grade, when some kid had the terrible idea to tease her for it, she’d tripped him at recess and knocked him flat. No one picked on her anymore after that. “But I was adopted in New York. My birth certificate says I was born in New York.”

“Oh,” Maddie says. “I’ve never looked at my birth certificate. But my dad says I was born in Nebraska. And I know I’m not adopted.” She fiddles with the cuffs of her sweater. “My dad’s a geneticist. He’s really into DNA and… that kind of stuff. So I know for sure he’s my father.”

Jeannie cocks her head to the side. “How old are you?” 

“Eleven,” Maddie says.

“Me too. When’s your birthday?”

“November fifth.”

“Me too,” Jean marvels. “How tall are you?” The interrogation would annoy Maddie if it weren’t so obvious something bizarre is going on. She wants to know her connection to this girl just as much. Is it a coincidence? But it can’t be, they have too much in common. 

“Four-foot-ten,” Maddie says. Jean doesn’t need to say “me too” this time; it shows on her face. “Alright, well, how much do you weigh?” Maddie says, daring her. 

“Ninety-eight pounds.”

“Ninety-nine pounds, for me,” Maddie says. “Probably all those Tootsie rolls.” They both look at each other and laugh, and then Jean leans forward, suddenly serious. 

“Sometimes my mother jokes and says that I’m psychic,” Jeannie says, staring at Maddie’s red hair, at the smattering of freckles across her nose that so resemble her own. “I get these feelings, sometimes. I get goosebumps. See, feel.” She holds out her arm and Maddie puts a hand on it. Sure enough, goosebumps. “If we have the same birthday, and we look exactly alike… Maddie, I think we’re sisters.” 

Maddie stares at her, eyes round, her mouth hanging open. Can that be true? Can she have a whole twin sister that she never knew about? 

Before she can wrap her head around it, Annie butts in again, unable to remain quiet. “I  _ told _ you!” she exclaims, putting a hand on each other their shoulders. “Jeannie, how cool is this? You have a sister! A twin sister! Ohmygawd, you could pull off some truly heinous pranks. We gotta get to scheming.” 

Maddie smiles cautiously, looking up to find Jeannie meeting her gaze with the same cautious smile. So. So she has a twin sister. 

And, maybe more importantly, she might have a friend. Maybe even two. 

* * *

After swimming lessons, Maddie uses her free time to go hang out with Annie and Jeannie in their cabin. Even though camp is only three weeks long, they’ve already decorated the place with a big poster of Troy Donahue and a bunch of postcards of places in France and Hawaii and Japan. Jeannie tells her later that she wants to go to all those places someday. 

“What’s your father like?” Jeannie asks her while Annie paints her toenails. Maddie’s still trying to choose a color. Her father doesn’t allow her to paint her nails or wear make-up, so she’s never gotten to do any of this before. 

“Why does it matter?” Maddie says, examining a bottle of bright red polish.

“Well, if we really are sisters, then he’s my father, too,” Jeannie points out. “I want to know what he’s like.”

Maddie shrugs. “Very strict,” she says. “He works a lot. Always focused on his work. Sometimes, um, he volunteers at an orphanage, though,” she says, feeling suddenly as though she needs to defend her father. He may be strict, but he puts a roof over her head and food on her plate, doesn’t he? “So he does care about kids.”  _ Just not his own _ , she thinks to herself bitterly. 

“An orphanage?” Jeannie says. “Do you think…?”

Maddie doesn’t need to be a mindreader to know what she’s thinking. “I don’t know,” she says quickly. “I don’t know if you were ever at that orphanage. A-and I don’t know why he kept me but not you. Dad never mentioned having any other kids. I… I don’t even know anything about my mother.” 

Jean’s face falls; it seems like that might have been her next question. “The one time I asked him, he got so angry it scared me. And I’ve looked for photo albums and stuff, but I never found anything.” 

“Well, let’s start our family photo album right now,” Jean says, blowing on her fingernails. “Annie, take a picture of me and Maddie.” She plops down on the bottom bunk next to her and wraps an arm around her shoulders, careful not to smear her nail polish. 

“Okay,” Annie says from behind her Kodak. “Say cheese!” 

Maddie’s never played MASH before, so Annie and Jeannie show her how it’s done. “M is for mansion, A is for apartment, S is for shack and H is for house,” Annie explains, writing all the letters down on a piece of paper she tore out of her journal. “Then we write down four boys’ names, four types of cars and the numbers one through four.”

“Why?” Maddie says, tilting her head so she can see the paper. 

“That’s how you figure out who you’re gonna marry and what you’re gonna drive and how many kids you’ll have,” Jean explains. “Here, we’ll show you how.”

So she and Annie go first. Annie’s divination reveals that she’ll live in an apartment with Jeremy Marsh, have four kids and drive a Camaro. Jean’s shows that she’ll live in a mansion with Cody Kordova with two kids and a station wagon. 

“Cody Kordova?  _ Blech _ ,” Jean remarks, miming sticking her finger down her throat. “I’d rather marry  _ you _ , Annie.” 

“The game doesn’t lie,” Annie giggles, poking Jean with the eraser end of her pencil. “Okay, Maddie, your turn.” 

Maddie doesn’t recognize the name of the boy she supposedly ends up with, but Annie assures her he’s “a stud.” Her fortune predicts that she’ll live in a mansion, drive a Mustang and raise a single child. 

“It’s not real, though,” she points out, feeling kind of silly. “it’s not for real.”

“Well, yeah,” Jean says, shrugging. “That’s why it’s fun. You get to make believe.”

“Yeah, jeez Louise, Madelyne,” Annie says, shoving her playfully. “You probably told other kids that Santa wasn’t real.” 

“Oh, well I was homeschooled so I never really hung around other kids,” Maddie explains, feeling suddenly unbearably awkward and boring. “But, um, sometimes my father let me talk to the kids from the orphanage where he worked.” 

“Well, there ya go,” Annie says. “It’s a hard knock life.”

“Annie, be nice,” Jean chides, giving Maddie a sympathetic look. It’s strange, seeing another girl share your same features, your same  _ face _ , and yet look and act so differently. When she’s sitting still, Jean looks just like Maddie. It’s when she moves that Maddie can see how different they really are. Jean is brasher, louder, more confident. 

It’s like looking at a better version of herself. 

“I’m always nice,” Annie declares, sticking her tongue out at Jean. The two of them start bickering and Maddie drowns it out, wondering what her father is doing right now, if he’s working at the orphanage, if he’s conducting another of his experiments. 

* * *

Three weeks come and go all too quickly, and before long Maddie finds herself rolling up her bed linens and packing her suitcase. “I’m going to miss you  _ so _ much,” Annie declares as she haphazardly throws her clothes into her duffel bag. “I mean, I’m used to just going back home with Jeannie, and I almost never make good friends at camp.” Annie sighs and flops back on her now-bare mattress. “I wish you could come live with Jean in New York.”

Maddie shrugs, hiding her face as she zips up her suitcase. “That’d be neat.” 

Jean, Annie and Maddie walk together from their cabin to the main gate, where all the parents are pulling up to collect their kids. 

“Here,” Jean says, handing Maddie a piece of notebook paper, folded into fourths. “That’s my address. I was thinking maybe… you could write me a letter?” She smiles. “I just found out I have a sister. I don’t want to never hear from her again.”

“Yeah. Yes, of course I’ll write,” Maddie says, and she puts the piece of paper into her backpack carefully, tucking it into an inner pocket where she won’t lose it. “Um… I’ll get one of those PO box things. And when I write you, I’ll tell you the number, so you can write me back.”

“I’d like that,” Jean says. 

Too soon, a car honks and Annie looks up. “That’s my mom. Time to go, Jean.”

Annie hugs Maddie really, really tight and gives her a kiss on the cheek and then goes to toss her duffel bag in her parents’ car, leaving Jean and Maddie to say their goodbyes in private. 

“I’m going to write you,” Maddie promises. 

“I know,” Jean says. She hugs her long-lost sister and cries even though she’s smiling. “Maddie? I’m so, so glad you came to camp this year.” 

“Me too,” Maddie says, scrubbing at her eyes with the sleeve of her t-shirt. “Good—”

“No, no, don’t say goodbye,” Jean says, pointing a finger. “Don’t you do it, Maddie. Just say… ‘see you later, alligator.’”

Maddie makes a face, but she does it. “See you later, alligator.”

With deadly seriousness, Jean responds, “In a while, crocodile.” She hugs Maddie one last time, and then she’s gone. And Maddie is alone again, waiting for her father to come pick her up. 


End file.
